Conference Update (2)

Whew, I'm home and I survived.

This conference was a "regional" conference that pulled together UC British historians, lit folk, English folk, and political scientists (although they didn't come). The idea was to bring together faculty and their grads to see what UC is up to as far as British studies, and if there even is a UC spin to British Studies. If you guessed our spin is that we are "interdisciplinary" and embrace the "digital humanities" - you win a prize!*

 Most of the talks yesterday were very good and very different. Most were Works in Progress updates (it always gives me confidence to see advance scholars present unfinished/unrefined material- sort of a, hey, I'm not a total idiot I'm just in the process), but a few were really outstanding polished talks.

My roomie calmed down a bit and we had a very pleasant conversation going to and from dinner.  I spent most of Fri and the first half of Sat hiding from the scholar whose work I am in part revising/responding to. In fact, I spent most of today cold with fear and wondering if I just hid under the table, would they really notice if I was gone. But then it was our panel's turn to talk and up at the conference table I scuttled. Once I launched into my talk I hit my normal stride - fully of energy, excitement, and really deep passion for my work. I don't know if other people "feel" their material like this - so many academics spend so much time looking very serious and very scholarly, but I can't keep my excitement under wraps. Despite losing my place a few times, I felt pretty good and was really glad when it was over. In the Q&A I saw my scholar raise her hand and started mentally preparing myself to defend myself from the barrage of defensive statements and challenges to my work. Surprisingly, the first words out of her mouth was:

"That was a brilliant talk. You have a very refined and well-defended analysis and read this material in a really new and novel way. I need to be on your dissertation committee."

She went on to give some really good pointers, and a few challenges, and then called me brilliant again. I'm in a funny combination of shock and utter giddiness. I'm really proud of my work and apparently I'm pretty damn good at the whole "public speaking" bit. My adviser, who had never seen me speak like this, was beaming. I've received wonderful supportive feedback and created quite a buzz w/ both the history and the lit folk.

Oh yeah, and she hugged me as I was leaving. It was pretty amazing.

Now I'm home and going to celebrate with Slugs in Fishnets and some good old screaming at a screen.

*Interestingly, despite calling ourselves "British", we are all really scholars of England - as my 6" + Scottish adviser pointed out. I think it's funny that British scholars, who on some level presume to study all of the nations w/in the Islands are among the very last to hop on board the transnational bus. The transnational work that seems like it should come so naturally due to the geography is really resisted - if not ideologically, than mostly out of sheer negligence. For my part, I tried to do a British dissertation - but the Irish sources were blown up in 1922 and I couldn't afford to get to Scotland. Maybe for the manuscript.